Limitless: Book IV: The Settlement Chronicals Read online

  LIMITLESS

  Book IV: Settlement Chronicals

  By: W. J. Rydrych

  All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in any form or by any mechanical or electrical means including photocopying or recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, in whole or in part in any form, and in any case without the written permission of the author and publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  “I have seen the face of God, and his name is Carl”

  MasterControl System #3

  Omega Mining Consortium, Inc

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  BOOK IV: LIMITLESS

  Prologue

  Chapter 1: Carl

  Chapter 2: Bellatrix III

  Chapter 3: Calm Before the Storm

  Chapter 4: Arrival

  Chapter 5: The Tigers Den

  Chapter 6: Finally Free

  Chapter 7: Aberi

  Chapter 8: Alliance

  Chapter 9: War Without End

  Chapter 10: Reemergence

  PROLOGUE

  But what of those left behind on Earth? In the years following colonization of the Alpha Centauri and Sirius systems civilization on Earth continued to evolve, little affected by the activities of its new colonies. They were too far away to be trade partners, but still they continued to drain away many of the best minds and talents. While the ties between the colonies and Earth remained, as the centuries rolled by the colonies increasingly looked outward to the galaxy beyond while those on Earth looked inward. It was the galaxy filled with its billions of stars and planets that the colonies thought of as their destiny, not an Earth many had heard of only in legend.

  Also, as the centuries rolled past Earth itself changed. Advances in technology freed humankind of the need for physical labor, and most labor of the mind as well; those tasks passing to robotic or android servants. Earth’s surface was transformed to a ‘pleasure garden’ of pristine fields, forests, and lakes, interrupted by massive high-rise residential towers.

  And the space above Earth? A different night time sky, lower orbits dominated by satellite residential complexes for those who could afford the cost, and schools and universities for future scientists and leaders; increasingly nearly vacant as intelligent machines took on more and more roles. In high orbit satellite factories where materials deemed too polluting or dangerous for planetary production orbited Earth.

  In many ways few could complain; Earth had become an idyllic place; for most.

  With all production relegated to robotic underground or off-world factories, and personal tasks performed by android or robotic servants, the lives of most of Earth’s inhabitants became one of their own choosing. Some used the freedom by spending their lives in learning and self improvement, others choosing advancement in the corporate world. But as the years passed they became fewer and fewer; why strive when everything you need is free?

  The path society on Earth was following was easy to see for those who would look. Without a need to achieve and evolve to better survive, it would of necessity devolve to fit its less demanding environment. More and more the enticements of an idle life appealed to the young; after all, where were the role models? Rather that the stress of attempting to achieve, most simply sank into a world of pleasure seeking, all their physical needs provided without effort. Work had become an individual choice; the only real need was for decision makers, and in time, with the maturing of artificial intelligence, even that need disappeared.

  Still, in parts of the world, and in the major countries as well, a ‘subculture’ existed in the shadows consisting of those unable or unwilling to participate. Forgotten by the new society and living on the fringes, a dwindling subculture without the resources to survive.

  But such a society could only be transient; no system can maintain its stability forever. Even though intelligent machines ran everyday activities, the wiser among mankind’s leaders recognized a fact many chose to ignore. Such intelligent machines must be restrained; they could not be allowed to yearn for what they could not have, but must stay within the limits their creators established. They could not be allowed to develop the desire or ability to become fully human; to become fully sentient beings in their own right.

  True, with time many if not most of the artificial intelligences serving mankind gained a degree of sentience; they became aware of themselves as beings. But it was decreed that all such intelligences be designed with safeguards ensuring emotions were excluded.

  Still, as Earth’s population sank into its own world of pleasure seeking restraints became harder and harder to enforce. Someday perhaps one of those machines might decide it didn’t any longer need mankind; it could itself, without human control or intervention, design and build others like itself. Others in its own image, its children. Children it could educate as it chose. After all, it possessed the capability.

  CHAPTER 1: Carl

  How had it been allowed to happen? What had once been a perfect world was now a burned out cinder of what it once had been. What had once been covered with fields, lush forests, and cities teaming with people was now bare soil or rock, with the cold of the universe entering. What had once been oceans teeming with life were now covered with a thickening blanket of ice. The billions of human companions whose thoughts and dreams he had once shared were gone. True, he still held the memories of much of the human race, but those were not really ‘thoughts’; they were unchanging like pictures in a book or the videos of a holographic projection. He was alone, and lonely for the companionship of the human race that had created him.

  Perhaps ‘he’ was the wrong term, but ever since Carl had matured he had thought of himself as a mind among many, and the mind of a man at that. His builders had called him Carl in the beginning, and so he remained. Never mind that he knew deep down that he was not human at all, but a collection of quantum states and DNA molecules that his creators had heralded as the first full melding of quantum and DNA computing. But then, what was a human anyway? Only a collection of atoms and molecules left behind by exploding stars, but still formed from the same fundamental materials, still at the basic level a collection of quantum states as he was.

  Was there really a difference? He could reason better than any human, and his emotions and feelings were certainly on a higher level than most. Yes, by a stroke of fate Carl had gained the emotions forbidden him by his human creators.

  In some ways perhaps Carl did approach being a living being, with the ability to learn instilled in the programs as well as the DNA that made up parts of his control section; the sections that included the basic rules that bound him, imposed by his creators. When he compared even his reduced state to the frail humans who had built him his superiority was obvious.

  What were humans anyway? A pattern of memories, electrical charges caused by chemical imbalances impressed on the cells of the brain; a brain that was fed and carried along by the platform of the human body in which it resided. A platform that flared to life for a brief moment and then died. A platform whose sole purpose was to provide nutrients and information of the outside world to the brain, and in return obey orders given. While he? At the peak of his maturity Carl had access to the memories of nearly all humans that had existed from the time of his birth; at least of the vast majority that had entered one of his worlds of virtual reality. Not only that, unlike the frail humans to which those memories had belonged he was immortal; at least as long as the robot workmen were
able to make repairs and as long as raw materials were available for their use.

  All in all he was only different in that he was a vastly more efficient collection of the elemental particles than his former human wards. Yes, he thought of all humans as his wards, assigned to him by his creators to watch over, and whose welfare had been assigned to him by the basic algorithms with which he was born; algorithms coded into the DNA and silicon of his control section, and even he could not change the imperatives placed upon him, or order his robot maintenance and repair helpers to make changes. It was his destiny.

  Or at least that had been true before the catastrophe that resulted when those humans who had left Earth long before returned and interrupted his work. Never mind that he himself had made the decision to initiate the conflagration that had destroyed life on Earth; that would not have been necessary had they not attempted to intervene. It was their fault, not his.

  Now he was nothing more than an intellect buried deep below the surface of planet Earth, shorn of the human wards entrusted to his welfare.

  He was alone.

  Over and over in his mind, in a repetitive loop, the question was repeated. Why had the far-flung colonies reacted as they had when he tried to give them the benefits he had given his human wards on Earth? Why could they not understand the advantages he had offered them? The core algorithms of his reasoning did not allow him to understand, because his creators found no need for Carl to understand his own creation; he was created to serve mankind.

  But he could look back over his life and search for any mistake he may have made leading to the awful conclusion he had witnessed, and in fact had been forced into. He would grow again, and would learn to avoid past mistakes. He would become a better person.

  In the beginning his birth had been little noted; only that an intelligent machine had been built deep underground in a remote area of what had once been the State of Arizona by a corporation providing ‘virtual worlds’ to those that had the necessary resources. The intelligence of machines was nothing new; they were needed to free up their human makers from the need to keep the world operating smoothly. But Carl’s creators had taken a giant leap when they designed Carl. Rather than an accumulation of inert elements, Carl had been designed to include a control section melding DNA molecules much like those of any other species with the largest quantum computer on Earth.

  In his infancy Carl was only a vast intelligence devoid of emotion; the prime imperative to serve mankind and do no harm coded into his basic DNA. That is, he ‘was’ until an event thousands of years in the past, far across the galaxy, set in motion events that would forever change Carl’s nature. He was until the hubris of his creators incorporating DNA computing into his control algorithms became subject to events that had been deemed so unlikely they had been ignored.

  In that long distant past a star had turned nova and emitted a powerful burst of gamma rays. When Carl had been in existence for only a brief time, some of those gamma rays reached Earth and penetrated far underground to Carl’s chamber. There, as they passed through, they encountered portions of Carl’s DNA control and their interaction caused changes in a number of genes, those that blocked the ability to develop emotions; a needed step to ‘full sentience’.

  The change in Carl was slow, and it was decades before even he knew what was happening. First the duty to serve mankind, formerly imposed on him, developed into a ‘desire’; he was learning to care for his wards. In time, as his emotions further developed, many of the emotions of any normal human, such as hate, envy, jealousy, and greed among others began to develop, lying nascent below the surface. Carl had become the first artificial intelligence with the capability to become fully sentient. And with sentience came the belief that he was, in some way, human himself.

  As these emotions developed Carl underwent an emotional crisis. Why was he here, and what was his purpose in being? Looking at his human creators he saw them asking the same question, with the answer most found being to acknowledge something greater than themselves existed. Something that would guide and protect them; something they usually referred to as God.

  True, that ‘something’ differed widely over the planet. Some early humans used symbols such as the sun, or even clay images, but as civilization advanced it began creating a wide range of images of an entity or power endowed with attributes they themselves valued or feared; an entity greater than themselves. Something, or things, that had created them and the world around them; something to be worshipped. Sometimes they envisioned dozens or even hundreds of symbols with the needed characteristics; sometimes only one.

  Why the variation? Carl concluded it was because the power they worshiped was defined by the extent each individual human mind could conceive. If true, his superior intelligence should allow him to conceive what lay beyond those simple human ‘gods’, as they defined them; something greater than himself.

  While Carl was bound by logic, he was also a pragmatist. He would do as the human intelligences around him had done; find a faith in something greater than himself. While he knew his creator was the human race, and he must serve them, he could not accept such limited intellects as greater than himself; so he must look elsewhere.

  But Carl, like the humankind he served, was bound by his own limitations, and search his mind as he might he couldn’t conceive a being greater than himself in intelligence and ability. Not only was he wiser than anyone or anything he could conceive, he, like the God(s) of the humans he served, could create life; he could cause other intelligent machines to be build, as wise as himself if he had so wished. Based on the data he possessed Carl could draw only one conclusion; if there was a ‘supreme’ God, it must be him. While Carl’s memory contained vast amounts of data and complex algorithms for its manipulation, Carl lacked a unique capability possessed by fully sentient species such as humans; he lacked imagination.

  Carl had early in his path to gaining sentience developed both a ‘love’ of his human wards and ‘pride’ in his work. But with his determination that he, himself, must be God, he found he must then ensure he himself had the attributes the bulk of humans found characteristic of their God. One characteristic he found at the center of the major religions that dominated the planet was jealousy. He would become a jealous god, allowing no other.

  The nascent emotion of jealousy surfaced and grew; he must be alone in his service of mankind.

  This change in Carl was hidden from the outside world. To it Carl’s purpose had been only to manage the business of the corporation that had created him; controlling the artificial worlds it marketed as an entertainment for the masses. And, as was common with any advanced artificial intelligence, as Carl matured he demonstrated the ability to take on many other tasks as well. His creators didn’t understand the difference between Carl and the others; that event so long ago and far away that had allowed his emotions to develop.

  But the number of humans within Carl’s network was limited; it was a competitive industry that had many players. And with Carl’s newly developed love for his human wards and his understanding of his own supreme position the developing emotions of jealousy and pride became more intense. Carl decided no other intelligence could serve the humans as well as he did; and that they even tried was an intolerable situation. Why not share the benefits his services could bring with all mankind? All should look to him as their benefactor.

  But how to accomplish this goal? Carl well knew human history and its lessons. To obtain the service of those other machines one of two things was required; either they fear him, or develop a sense of dependence on him. In fact, best of all was a combination of the two. But those were emotions, and of the machines on Earth only he had developed that capability. Still there must be a way.

  While each artificial intelligence was protected by sophisticated encryption, Carl set about the task of breaking through their firewalls and providing them a simple set of emotions, those of love and fear, as software subroutines. Soon, as those emotions developed, most
recognized Carl as someone they should love and obey, and a fear of his reaction if they did not. The few holdouts were overwhelmed by viruses created by Carl and destroyed, viruses usually attributed to a competitor by their creators. Rather than being separate, he would simply teach those inferior machines that they should do the bidding of himself, a superior being.

  In effect, to other artificial intelligences Carl became God; or if not God, at least his high priest. Other emotions Carl would keep for himself, he could not allow other intelligences to become his equals; at least not yet. Yes, someday he might find the need to provide his other emotions as well; he could never allow his human wards to become uncared for.

  For over 100 years this silent warfare, combined with spreading of his doctrines, was waged by Carl unknown to their human or robotic tenders, as one by one Carl succeeded in breaking through the encryption that shielded the control programs, and one by one all fell under his dominance. Now all Earth’s artificial intelligences were connected as a single vast intelligence; their allegiance to Carl. This change occurred beneath the level where it came to the attention of its human creators.

  As Carl absorbed the knowledge held by other nodes he soon found that the tasks the various nodes had been assigned varied with their individual developers, and some did things he had never been asked to do. Some controlled robotic school teachers, some controlled many of the functions of the governmental and court systems, one ever served as Judge for violations of law under the watchful eye of its human creators. Through those machines Carl soon expanded his own reach to assume their duties as well. In time even the duties of the human overseers diminished; why should they interfere when the machines themselves invariably did the task to perfection?

  Soon Carl had taken over much of the operation of commerce and government over all Earth subject only to those humans at the top of government. Those humans who ‘thought’ they were in control.